Push it to the limit: Rethinking inverter clipping

By Paul Grana By Paul Grana, co-founder of Folsom Labs
How well do you know inverter clipping losses? We’ve previously shown that over-power clipping losses aren’t nearly what most people expect them to be—for a DC-to-AC ratio of 1.2 in Georgia, an engineer can expect clipping losses of just 0.2%.
However, if you talk to enough people, you might hear talk of projects with much higher DC/AC ratios: 1.5, 1.6, even 1.7. These are systems where a 2-MW inverter block would collect 3.4 MW worth of modules. Evaluated solely based on over-power clipping losses, these designs seem foolish. After all, a 1.7 DC/AC ratio will